


Pendulum

by serendipitousDescent



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Character Death, F/F, F/M, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Female Character, Skaia, Slow Build, Smoking, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 05:41:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipitousDescent/pseuds/serendipitousDescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back and forth.</p><p>Back and forth.</p><p>A pendulum is steady, and consistent, but sometimes it can falter. Something can throw it off ever so slightly, and then everything changes. Both sides will be effected, and it can be difficult to see just how things are going to change. Because there are times when it will start swinging in an entirely different directions.</p><p>And it just so happens that Rose Lalonde is that falter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

The pen has an odd power over people.

With just a few quick strokes, it has the ability to make words and words are the one thing that everyone takes into their soul. Whether they want to or not.

Words can change a person's life in a manner of different ways, depending on the way that they're used, and a pen only has the power to accent that. After all, the ink of a pen makes it permanent no matter how many times it's been crossed out. One could even say that doing so only gives the word more power than it previously had.

A pen has far more power than any one person can ever realize.

And when they're spoken, those words can vibrate through a person's very being, changing the very fundamentals of who they are.

Someone can be convinced about something just by hearing the inflictions in a person's voice or in the way that they move their body as they speak. Passionate words can move a crowd without fail, disregarding the words that are actually being said. The right words, however, can make someone see the world in ways that they never had been able to before.

Sometimes, it was no wonder that people were often referred to as a flock of sheep, no matter what their species was.

And Rose Lalonde was more than well aware of that little fact and she often put her own skills with words to good use. Maybe even more often than she really should have been.

To her, it was all nothing more than a second instinct to convince someone of something that benefited her in some way or another. It was even easier for people to read the things that she wrote and to be affected by them. It was a skill that was entirely hereditary from the stories that she had heard from her mother's youth. Apparently, the older woman had never been one who was capable of holding back any of the details. 

The ability, which was less of an ability and more of a skill that she had picked up over the years, was what made her start her career as an author. Most people failed and burned at that particular task, but it had brought her to the midpoint of her twenty second year without much of a problem at all. 

She couldn't say that she was the most well-known author out there, and her novels were more popular with the human demographics than they were with the troll demographics. 

But that was simply the way that things normally worked when one was, in fact, a human.

Which brought Rose Lalonde to the very moment of her life.

There was nothing particularly interesting about this very moment, at least not yet. Rose sat at a table just outside of a small cafe and the building the cafe was housed in had at least twenty five floors to it. Trolls and humans alike strolled the street just ahead of her, neither of the two species receiving a second look as they walked by. Just as it had been for centuries upon centuries. 

Nothing out of the ordinary.

A cup of luke-warm coffee was sitting on the table in front of her, along with the first few pages of her newest novel that she had been meaning to work on for the past few days. Dave, her brother, had been visiting her for the past week and had absolutely insisted on visiting every single tourist spot in the area. Ironically, of course. Which had left her no time to herself until now.

“Miss, would you like your coffee refilled? Or maybe you would like to check out the dessert menu now?” the waiter asked her.

Rose's back straightened at the sight of him, her fingers moving automatically to swipe some of her short, white blonde hair out of her face. “I'll be just fine for the time being,” she informed him, smooth and certain, “Thank you though.”

He nodded and quickly went on his way, not at all deterred by her rejection. She watched his back until he was completely out of her view before turning back to the work that was still sitting in front of her, ever so patiently. It took her mere moments to fish a pen out of her purse and then to start back on the sentence where she had left off.

And, as always, the world flowed from her pen without the briefest amount of hesitation, rich and strong. 

Just as she knew that they would be.

She wasn't entirely certain when her hand stopped moving though. It could have been anywhere between a few minutes later and an hour after she had originally started to write. Her eyes slipped closed and everything around her was blocked out, until she couldn't even vaguely hear the faint (or sometimes, not quite so faint) sound of people walking by. It was if the world around her had slipped away entirely, which wasn't really an uncommon occurrence for her. 

Although, she couldn't really call it all that common of an occurrence for her either.

She could almost imagine the soft smell of pine and the light noise of a bird chirping just a little ways a way. The air seemed to be a bit richer than the air of the city, less bothered by the pollution that the city always brought with it. There was a feeling of the hard bark of a tree under her mixed with a bit of soft moss. It was peaceful and calm, and she was certain that no one else would ever stumble upon this place.

And then Rose opened her eyes, entirely certain that it would all just disappear, just as it always did.

A world just outside of her grasp.

It didn't.

That was probably the moment when the words started to fail her.


	2. Hiding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things change. 
> 
> Life goes on. 
> 
> The pendulum keeps swinging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello~ thanks to all of the lovely individuals who left me kudos! This one is most definitely quite a bit longer than the prologue was, by the way. Although, I'm sure you've noticed.
> 
> Anyways, let's go for some shameless advertising and say that [here](http://sempiternaldreamer.tumblr.com/) is my tumblr. 
> 
> You are most definitely allowed to bug me about updates and all that there!

Green.

That was the very first thing that Rose's eyes registered as she became fully aware of the world around her once more. She hadn't seen this much green for years and years, especially not as lush or rich as the green in front of her. It was one of the more unfortunate consequences of living in the city. 

Deep green trees stood tall and wide around her, appearing as if nothing but the birds would ever be able to see the tops of them. The bushes around her were think with life and she didn't doubt the existence of a family of small animals living deep within their branches, safe from the world around them. Even the air seemed to be lighter, filled with more oxygen than she would have thought possible. 

Everything about this was entirely impossible. 

Her breath suddenly started to come a little bit faster, the act itself far more difficult than she would have expected it to be. Rose's gaze flowed down to herself and she was shocked to find that even her clothes had changed from what she had been wearing before. She would have remembered something as obvious as putting on a corset. Not to mention the dress that she was currently wearing on top of said corset. She could have sworn that she had been wearing a simple thigh-length skirt and a nice blouse just moments ago.

(She could have sworn a lot of things right about then, but she had the slightest feeling that it wouldn't have made a difference.)

It was absolutely gorgeous, in the exact shade of lavender that she loved more than any other colour in the world. The skirt of it fell down to her ankles - so different from the shorter fashions that she was used to - and it seemed elegant in a way few clothes managed to properly achieve. There were only a few frills here and there, and the entire thing fit perfectly on her. Including around her wider hips, and she always had difficulties finding things that fit her properly there. It was as if the entire thing had been perfectly tailored for her. 

The pen that had been tightly clenched in her hand before was now replaced by a fancy calligraphy pen of sorts, along with a small pool of ink beside a piece of paper. The paper even looked slightly different, even while the words written on it were the same as she last remembered. 

It was in her own handwriting too.

A gasp sounded out through the previously silent forest, making her jump and-

And.

And all she could feel was the hard cement underneath her back. 

Sometime cold and wet starting to pool around her hand.

“Miss? Miss, are you alright?”

Rose blankly blinked, her eyes slowly scanning the area around her. It was so different from what she saw only a few moments before. Had she simply imagined the entire thing? Or had she been picturing the scene in her head so vividly that she actually thought that she was there?

No, both of those things were wrong.

She knew what she had seen, there was no doubt about it. 

“Miss, please, I need to know if you're alright. At least... shake your head yes or no for me, alright? You took a pretty rough fall there.”

The words kicked into her consciousness and within moments, she was back up on her feet. The man who had been talking to her, a waiter she assumed, reiterated his question, far more sure than he had sounded a few moments previous. She blocked them out, however, knowing that there was no way that she could answer most of his questions at the moment anyways.

She didn't even have the smallest clue as to whether or not she was alright, and the other questions...

Well, she wanted to know the answers to them herself.

For the moment though, she simply wanted to get out of here. She didn't want to be questioned by some idiot as to why she had collapsed onto the ground, not when the only thing she could really see was the bright green from the... the whatever that had been. 

“Miss!”

Rose ignored the shout, shaking off the hand that had managed to grab her shoulder. Her entire body moved at once, led purely by the adrenaline that was currently coursing through her veins, and her hand reached out to slap the man's cheek. The following noise was deafening but it didn't deter her in the least. The following whispers were what got to her, and she did her best to drive them out of her mind, focusing in on the harsh beat of her heart instead.

Sheets of paper were carelessly shoved into her purse, crumpling slightly as she did so. She vaguely registered that she would have to straighten them out properly later on floated through the back of her mind but she paid no attention to it as she fled the area.

It was a bit disappointing. 

She had always enjoyed coming to the small cafe.

\--

A half empty glass of wine sat next to Rose's bedside table, but the young blonde woman hadn't so much as touched it for the last hour at the very least. No, Rose had been sitting there instead, trying her very best to figure out just what had happened to her earlier that day. It wasn't like there was some sort of handbook that came with trying to figure weird shit out, even though she would greatly appreciate such a handbook at the moment. 

Also, it was her mother's fault that she turned to alcohol in any sort of stressful situation. 

Not that any of the previous stressful situations had anything on this one.

But right now, even as she looked around the room that she had so carefully put together to suit her tastes, everything seemed wrong. Or rather, it was just all too normal for her at the moment. She wanted something to distract her, something to bring her away from this place. To somewhere else instead.

Anywhere else. 

With a sigh, she gave up trying to resist and reached over to her left, opening up the drawer of her nightstand. 

The handle was slightly cool to the touch but it opened up nice and smoothly, just as she had expected. After all, it had taken her a month of fine adjustments in order to get the drawer to open without any sort of troubles, simply because she hated it when things weren't quite right like that. But that was the last thing on her mind at the moment. 

Reaching into the drawer, she fumbled around for a few moments through the mess and searched for the one thing that she was craving more than anything else in the world. It took her a few moments longer than it really should have, but just because everything else in her apartment was neat and tidy didn't mean that her drawers were. Finally she pulled out a nice crystal ashtray and a packet of cigarettes, and placed both of them on top of the nightstand. 

It was a rather disgusting habit, that much she was more than willing to admit. She hadn't even tried to kick the habit though, even if she had managed to keep it down to one a day. Her defence on that matter was that she deserved one little habit after the shit that she had gone through as a child. 

No one seemed too keen to disagree with her there.

And there was no way that she could do what she was about to without one, either.

Her hand disappeared into the drawer once again, coming out with a lighter moments later. There was a certain rhythm to the way that she pulled the cigarette out of the package and lit it, stopping to briefly enjoy that first drag. An action that she had repeated many times over.

A few moments were spent just sitting there and enjoying her cigarette, putting off the thing that she knew she had to do more and more. It was difficult, that much was more than obvious but the cigarette helped. It gave her a time limit because she knew that she would have to do it before she finished the cigarette. Otherwise, there would have been no use to it at all. 

At least that was what she had been telling herself for years now. 

It was with a heaving sigh that she finally reached for the phone, staring at it for a brief moment before dialling the number she knew off by heart. Her own heart was thudding away in her chest and she had the sneaking suspicion that if it continued like this for much longer, she would have a heart attack. 

Rose put the phone up to her ear, listening to the dial tone. 

Then it started to ring.

And ring.

And ring.

And ring.

“Hello, this is Dirk Strider. It seems that I'm unable to answer this piece of shit called a phone at the moment or you're just not cool enough. Chances are that I'll get back to you. Maybe. If you're some sort of creeper than get out of here.”

Her heart almost stopped at the message. Of all the times for him to be away from his phone. It would likely be another month before he actually remembered to get back to her too. 

That was the way it always was with Dirk.

There was really only one more option left but at least this conversation would be a bit more on the pleasant side than the previous conversation could have been. 

She reached over one more time first, flicking a bit of the ashes into the ashtray. Right where they belonged. The cigarette found its way between her lips once more but she wasn't nearly as nervous as she had been a few moments before. There was almost no reason for the cigarette anymore but she was going to enjoy it while it lasted.

Dave was a much easier person to deal with, in her own opinion.

This time around, the phone only rang once or twice before it was answered. It came as no surprise to her as her brother lived on his phone and never seemed to be able to keep a regular sleeping schedule like most other people were able to. It only seemed right that she would phone at... two in the morning instead of a halfway decent time of the day.

“Hey sis, how's the book going for you after you so graciously kicked me out last week because of it?” came the familiar, sassy voice of a certain Dave Strider.

“If I recall correctly, you were the one who was begging me to make you go home so that no one would be able to tell just how desperately you missed John,” Rose replied, falling into the sibling banter with ease.

Someone giggled on the other side of the phone, most definitely in the background. “Damn it, Rose, you just let the cat out of the bag and now it's so far out there that the cat doesn't even remember that the bag even existed in the first place. In fact, it's going to go get a degree in Ectobiology, and is going to become the first ectobiologist of its time. Thank all the fucking gods out there that that happened.”

“David, you're rambling again.”

“And I'll continue to ramble if you keep calling me by that horrific name. It even say Dave on my own birth certificate, thank you very much. Bro had made sure of that. If that were my actual name than I would have committed a noble self-sacrifice years and years ago, much like the samurai did way back when.”

“I doubt that John would have been too happy if you impaled yourself on your blade. You do have to think about your impressionable lover there with you,” Rose waited for the customary denial before continuing on, “That isn't why I phone you, however.”

“Get on with it then, or I really might impale myself on my blade here, impressionable lover or not.”

An awkward silence filled the air for a few moments, the easy atmosphere quickly disappearing as if it had never even been there to begin with. The blonde woman took a long drag of her cigarette, holding the smoke in her mouth for longer than necessary. She could hear Dave's soft breath from the other side of the phone and counted herself lucky that he seemed to have become a bit more patient in recent years.

“Did... Did Dirk ever mention Mom doing... weird things before she died? Like really weird things, not just coming home drunk all of the time. I tried asking him about it but you know how he is about answering the phone,” she finally asked. 

“You of all people should remember that he shares fuck all with me. Nah, he never really mentioned anything like that to me, other than that she really did make some strange as shit comments every now and again.”

“I suppose that it would be rather worthless to ask if you remembered just what those comments were, wouldn't it?”

“You would be entirely right about that one. You're crazy if you think that I remember them now. Just forget about them, alright? I know that not knowing will drive you nuts but for once in your life, just drop it.”

“Thank you, David. I shall talk to you another time then. Now, go enjoy your time with John and forget that I even phone you in the first place.”

Rose hung up the phone before she could hear her brother's response, much more interested in her vices now instead of the rest of the world around her. The conversation had been delightfully uninformative but there was little that she could do about it. She just had to adopt the Strider method of dealing with life for a little while. Naturally, that was ignoring it unless it came to bite you in the ass. 

In which case, one was to bite it back harder than it had bitten you. 

A lot harder.

And then act as if none of it had affected you in the slightest, of course.

\--

Rose ended up almost entirely forgetting about that strange moment in the cafe, the event fading from her mind more and more as time passed by with its own thoughts in mind. Most of that time was spent working on her newest book, just as she always had but she had been... persuaded to go out on a couple of dates too. It wasn't her fault that all of said dates had ended in disaster within the first hour or two.

It was going by without even consulting her as to whether or not she wanted it to.

Months later found her in a place that she always seemed to find her way back to, even after spending weeks of her time swearing that she would never come back. She wasn't entirely certain what she was doing here now of all times though. There was not even the smallest reason for her to have dragged herself to this isolated part of the world.

Yet, she still stood there, flickering her too long bangs out of her eyes for the millionth time that day. A haircut was something that she had been in need of for the last couple weeks or so.

A mansion stood right in front of the shorter, blonde woman and it was as familiar to her as the back of her own hand. Forest surrounded it on every angle other than the driveway, but even that quickly disappeared into the hidden depths. From here she could see the old factory that had been shut down since long before she had even been born. Nothing had changed since the last time that she had been here, other than the couple of inches that the plants seemed to have grown since then. 

Rose completely ignored the front door and headed straight to the backyard. The grass tickled her shins, making her regret wearing that short skirt without some sort of leggings on underneath them. It was easy to ignore though, despite knowing that red scratches would be plainly visible on her pale legs in a matter of minutes. Everything else around her was ignored entirely until she reached the shed and sat down in front of it, her head falling back against the door.

“Fuck, I missed this placed,” she commented to herself.

And she really had, even if she would deny it until the day that she died. Every part of it, the good and the bad.

Including the times with her mom, where she'd pretended that she hated the older woman.

She could picture the sunny afternoons that she'd spent outside in the backyard, plotting her latest shenanigans while she talked with John, Jade, and Dave online. Her mother would almost always be watching from the upstairs window, but she wouldn't notice such a thing until years later. Although, she had a feeling that her mother enjoyed their mother-daughter antics just as much as she had learned to. 

Her eyes gently closed, the world around her being blocked from view. But just as soon as it was gone, another was right back in its place. 

Just like that.

The mansion was restored to its former glory, almost as if no time had passed at all. Rose was fourteen years old again, all skin and bones without a single ounce of fat on her body. Not even on her chest, much to her disappointment at the time. If only she'd known. The air was muggy from the summer air but there wasn't so much as a single cloud in the sky. Jaspers was inside of the shed in his suit and tie but still a bit more on the dead side than she liked him.

She was laying on her stomach, the grass around her short and neat. Pesterchum was open on her phone but Jade's connection was as crappy as it always had been. And naturally, neither of the boys were anywhere around. Her gaze had wandered up to the second story window, only to see a very surprising sight.

At least it had been one to her at the time. 

“Mom?” she quietly said.

Her phone had beeped moments later, snapping her out of her shock. When she looked backa few moments later, her mom was no longer there. Just that horrible wizard statue that was always there. But how she knew the difference and it was only a few months later when she began to notice her mom standing there all of the time. 

A soft sigh escaped from her mouth as Rose slowly pulled herself from her memory. It was one of her favourite memories of her mom, even if it wasn't really that big of a memory. It was simply the moment when she had started to realize that the older woman cared for her a lot more than she ever admitted. It had taken her a while to accept the truth but once she did, she started to actually appreciate the things that her mother did for her.

And then she opened her eyes.

These weren't her clothes.

And there was no denying that she was absolutely furious.

“Where the fuck am I?” she screamed up at the heavens, “Couldn't I have just one day without something going wrong with me? That's all I ask for! One damn stupid day where I don't have to worry about Dirk, Dave, my novel, or – or whatever the fuck this shit is!”


End file.
